Neck comfort

The Pacific Northwest breeds a certain kind of bundle-upper. People like me love the look of warm scarves, which is great because for half the year, we have an actual reason to wear them. And not just when we're wearing our coats, either. We will keep them on all day. Even the draftiest room can be bearable when you've got a scarf coiling up your neck. And when you're holding out until your house has reached a consistent temperature of 58 degrees before reactivating your furnace, sometimes a girl just needs her knitted goods to get through.


I think a cowl neck is kind of like a dickie for cold weather. It looks like a gorgeous sweater coming out of your coat, but when you take the coat off, you've just got a big sweater necklace. Unlike the dickie, however, a cowl neck looks nice as an outer layer as well. (And that's why dickies are the butt of fashion jokes - the thought of someone wearing only the dickie is not just comical but horrifying. With cowl necks, no one screams when you take off your coat. Usually.)


The designer of this easy pattern took her inspiration from a $700 Burberry cowl neck. That's the blessing of being a knitter - you know better than to spend that much on something you could make yourself, in any color or material you want. This is just a series of big cable chunks, so it doesn't look so much cabled as it does twisted, which lets it overlap nicely on your neck.

My neighbors probably saw me taking this self-portrait. Couldn't pass up the rainy day light.

September the 9th

For the past several years on Oma's birthday, I've made a recipe of hers that I love. It's my favorite way to remember her. Who knows how many hours she spent with me (not to mention her other grandchildren) at her kitchen counter, letting me spread butter over sweet dough or mix up streusel with my fingers. Decades later, doing those same things in my own kitchen bring me into a sort of sensory nostalgia, and bring her right back.

Knowing that I had a P.E.O. meeting that fell right on Sept. 9, and being that this was a women's organization to which Oma belonged for years and held close to her heart, I knew that bringing a few plates of Kuchen - in this case, Streusel, Apfel and Pflaum Kuchen- would be the most appropriate things share with the women there on what would have been Oma's 106th birthday.


When I arrived at the meeting, a woman I hardly recognized walked up to me and said, "I'm Barbara! Remember me? From Chicago? Wheaton?" Suddenly I remembered this woman, whom I had met 3 years ago at one of our Christmas parties. At the time she had just moved to Spokane from Wheaton, Illionois, and I happened to be planning my own trip to nearby Chicago and was even considering the prospect of moving there. She had given me a list of recommendations of places to visit, even the name of a friend should I need a place to stay. Since my family lived in the area shortly before she moved to Wheaton in the 1970s, we had much to discuss. So here she was again, visiting our chapter for the first time since that party, and she said she had finally started settling in after a couple years of traveling with her husband on business.

Part of the reason I've loved making Kaffee Kuchen so much is because it reminds me, as I've even mentioned before on this blog, of how Oma used it to get out of her slump and get out to meet her neighbors in the first weeks after moving from Chicago to Boise. As I continued talking to Barbara that evening at the meeting, she specifically told the difficulty it is to meet her neighbors here. "They all keep to themselves," she said. "It was so different - and so much easier - in Wheaton."

It was as though Barbara was specifically planted at that meeting so that I could share a great story about Oma, who was once in nearly the exact same situation. Before leaving that evening, we exchanged e-mails, and I promised to send her the recipes to use for her own neighborhood meet and greet.

Nice to know that Oma's Kaffee Kuchen are still bringing people together, isn't it?

Workers' benefits

Why it's good to work on Labor Day

1. It just seems appropriate, doesn't it?
2. My 20 minute commute becomes 15.
3. Labor Day TV is the worst.
4. I bring in a plate of muffins and I'm a hero.
5. Then everyone says, "Let's get pizza for lunch!" as a reward for working.
6. There's no post-3-day-weekend let-down.

So, I'm relishing my day in the office. But if you're one of the lucky ones who gets the day off, I hope you're relishing it, too.

About the muffins above, they are the homey oatmeal raisin ones you can find on thekitchn.com. Even on a work day, it's a quick little recipe that uses stuff I would have used in my breakfast, anyway. And they disappeared pretty quickly in a nearly empty office.

Last weekend

There was still just the faintest hint of summer in the air. After a gnarly windstorm, it seemed as though the warm weather was blown south and out of my life for the next I-don't-want-to-think-about-how-many months. But there were still things to remind me the season was not quite over.

I'm still waiting for YOU, Cherokee Purples.

And days like today, when I take off my cardigan after getting in the car, are days that give me hope.

But I must admit, the last few days of wearing slippers and long sleeves, eating chili and knitting cowl necks, also gave me hope that I might not complain when the cooler days come, after all (in case you couldn't tell by where my mind was in the last post).

Still, I think I need a few more plates like these, and maybe just one more dip in the river, and two ore three last bare-legged days, and I promise I'll be in a good mood this fall and winter.

Christmas is coming

Monday morning, 6 a.m.

You know these kinds of things are meant to be when you're shopping at a store you usually don't go to and you see King Arthur whole wheat flour on sale, and your boyfriend asks you that same afternoon, "What are these for?" referring to a bag of raisins that's been sitting in the pantry for months, slowly dwindling down with each bowl of oatmeal (which was my answer, though I firmly believe that everyone should just have a bag of raisins on hand).

It was all leading up to my early morning foray into the world of English muffins. I saw this post on The Kitchn and thought, why wouldn't I? Though I had to get up a whole hour earlier than usual, I miraculously woke up without an alarm. Also, I must say that kneading a ball for 5 minutes is a great way to wake up. You can just kind of lean over with sleepiness onto that mass of dough, over and over. It's mindless and therapeutic. Kind of like a kitten who's got its eyes mostly closed and is purring and kneading on a pillow (the kind of thing I think about when I'm sleepy, obviously). I also did myself a favor by putting the dry ingredients together before bed last night. I did myself an extra favor by doing my pilates mat workout while waiting for the dough to rise this morning. I even had time for a quick shower before cutting out the muffins. I was feeling on top of the world before I even put them in pan.

And while they were cooking, I went out to check the weather and water my garden. When I came back inside, my coffee was ready and I had time to drink most of it without putting it in a travel mug. This is always a key element to a good day.

I made mine a little smaller than I think most people expect to see them, but I like them this way because either you feel good for just having one, or don't feel that bad for having one more.

As recommended, these are delicious straight out of the pan, but I toasted mine for extra crunch (though they're a little tricky to get out of a pop-up toaster) and put a small bit of butter and honey on it. Goooood morning.

Zucchini meltdown

Everyone has zucchini to share these days. Well, except for me. But I gladly accept any squash a person would care to off-load. The other day, I entered the office breakroom to find a table full of long green and yellow goods from someone's garden with a note that said "Enjoy!" I grabbed a few on my way out that day and started thinking about what to do with them. Zucchini bread is always my first thought. But then Smitten Kitchen had nice little recipe for a zucchini pasta dish, so I decided to try that first. I added a little bacon and sauteed scallions, and it was quite good.

Later, I was ready to begin my next quest: this delicious and somewhat strange recipe for Zucchini Bread on 101 Cookbooks. I was sold on the crystallized ginger and curry powder additions. I readied the ingredients and began grating the leftover yellow summer squash from dinner. Then I grabbed the zucchini. Grate, grate, grate. Instantly I began smelling a rather cool aroma and noticed an exceptionally wet grate box.

I have never been more angry at the sight of a cucumber than I was at that moment.

How did I not realize this ahead of time, I will never know. Feeling foolish for searching for the ultimate way to use up my free zucchini only to find I should have been looking up recipes for Pimm's Cup, I quickly grabbed my purse and went to the store at 10 p.m. to BUY zucchini.

But it was worth it. This is the absolute best late-night zucchini bread I have ever made.

And worth the wait, all the way to breakfast time.